RECENT NEWS

Pioneering scientists were awarded the MRC Impact Prize to celebrate their achievements alongside those of the 2023 MRC Millennium Medal recipient.

Danaher Corporation has launched a research collaboration with Stanford University's Department of Bioengineering intended to shape the future of cancer drug screening through ‘smart microscopy’. Combining spatial biology with artificial intelligence (AI), the research team at the Danaher Beacon for Spatialomics aims to help de-risk cancer drug development.

ALZpath has signed a licensing agreement with Beckman Coulter Diagnostics for use of its best-in-class ALZpath pTau217 antibody in a blood-based in vitro diagnostic (IVD) test on the DxI 9000 Immunoassay Analyzer to advance Alzheimer's disease diagnosis.

French startup Bioptimus has announced the release of H-optimus-0, which the company says is the world’s largest open-source AI foundation model for pathology. With 1.1 billion parameters, H-optimus-0 is trained on a proprietary dataset of several hundreds of millions of images extracted from over 500,000 histopathology slides across 4,000 clinical practices.

Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution 5.1 has received 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration. Philips was first to market an FDA-approved digital pathology solution in 2017 and is the most widely deployed digital pathology solution for primary diagnosis around the world.

To help accelerate research into new treatments for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), Thermo Fisher Scientific is partnering with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) – part of the US National Institutes of Health – on the myeloMATCH (Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice) precision medicine umbrella trial.

Innovate UK has awarded four UK companies a share of £4 million funding through Contracts for Innovation to support innovative research into dementia diagnosis.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting has ordered a full and independent investigation into the state of the NHS, to uncover the extent of the issues facing the nation’s health service. Mr Streeting says he wants a ‘raw and honest’ assessment that will deliver ‘the hard truths’.

The Western Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland has established the Annual Professor Gerry McKenna Award for staff excellence in medical science.

‘Navigating Quality Standards in Point of Care Testing’ is a day-long seminar hosted by UK NEQAS, taking place in Birmingham on 23 October, 2024.

RNAs may help identify stage II colon cancer patients who could benefit from chemotherapy following surgery. In a newly published study, investigators assess the biomarker potential of RNAs to identify such patients.

Researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH) and the University Hospital Zurich (USZ) have developed a new diagnostic method for cancer patients, a type of liquid biopsy that analyses blood samples rather than organs or tissues.

Beckman Coulter Diagnostics has launched its new DxC 500i integrated clinical chemistry and immunoassay analyser. Ideally suited for satellite and independent laboratories, the DxC 500i offers flexibility, scalability and data commutability with an extensive assay menu.

Professor Sarah Coupland has been elected President of the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland (PathSoc) following the Society's recent Annual General Meeting in Sheffield.

The new Labour Government has appointed Sir Patrick Vallance FRS FMedSci FRCP HonFREng as Minister of State (Minister for Science). He was previously Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) from April 2018 to April 2023.

Cepheid has announced that its Xpert HCV molecular test to detect hepatitis C at the point of care has been greenlit for the US market.

Moderna has announced a project award of $176 million through the Rapid Response Partnership Vehicle (RRPV) to accelerate the development of mRNA-based pandemic influenza vaccines.

London pathology services provider Synnovis has recently issued a further update on its efforts to recover and restore services following the cyberattack at the start of June.

Lalita Ramakrishnan, Group Leader in the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology’s (LMB) Cell Biology Division and the University of Cambridge’s Molecular Immunity Unit (housed in the LMB), has been announced as the 2024 recipient of the Robert Koch Prize, in recognition of her pioneering research investigating the molecular mechanisms behind tuberculosis (TB).

Analysing nasal swabs taken during the pandemic, researchers at Yale School of Medicine suggest that the frequent presence of other viruses and bacteria may have helped to protect children from the worst effects of COVID-19 by boosting their immune systems.